Top 10 Short Anime 2015 [Best Recommendations]

Other Reference: Eikoku Ikka, Nihon wo Taberu (Sushi and Beyond)

Sometimes we just don’t have time to be dedicating hours of our lives to anime. Whether it’s going to work, cleaning the house or starting a brand new Fallout 4 run, there are various reasons for you not having the time to dedicate to marathoning the latest and greatest within anime. But thanks to those boffins in Japan, a new invention has entered the markets. The experts call it “Short anime”.

The idea is that it’s just like your regular 20 minute anime episodes but through modern technology, has been decreased to the size of 3-7 minutes. It’s really something remarkable and I’d like to set you off on a trial run with this new product. Here are ten of the best short anime released in 2015 for your viewing pleasure. Shake well.

10. Military!

Episodes: 12

Aired: January 2015 - March 2015

The great thing about short series is that they’re over so quickly that you don’t really have the opportunity to ask “Wait, did that make any sense?” before the next episode is flashing before your eyes. After his father accidentally becomes a war hero, Sohei’s house is invaded by young girls who also happen to be high ranking military personnel. As Sohei’s home is invaded by assassins from the opposing forces, they must work together to protect Sohei’s life at all costs. Well, that’s the idea anyways.

Military! has a ridiculous sense of humour, jumping from silly to even sillier at a rapid pace with little regard for its own collateral damage. Each episode is a series of ridiculous events following our terribly inefficient soldiers and (thankfully) a terribly inefficient assassin who all seem to be equally at the mercy of their next door neighbour. It’s silly, ridiculous and occasionally funny and that’s enough to make it onto this list.

9. Danchigai

Episodes: 12

Aired: July 2015 - September 2015

The Slice of Life genre can occasionally be identified by its lack of narrative weight and open unrestricting plot framework, however Danchigai seems to have taken that to the next level. This is a story about a guy and his four sisters. That’s about it. Occasionally charming and occasionally worth a chuckle, Danchigai introduces us to its cast through these short moments at home where our characters struggle for their own space and privacy. And that’s about it.

In some ways, you could say that Danchigai gets everything right. In other ways, you could say it gets everything wrong. But the reality of the situation is that it doesn’t really have much in it at all. Adapted from a 4-koma manga, Danchigai has the plot consistency of Garfield and has no goals to change this at all. So it’s up to this intrepid writer to find something worth talking about within 24 minutes of non-content and honestly, I reckon I’ve found it all.

8. Bikini Warriors

Episodes: 12

Aired: July 2015 - September 2015

Bikini Warriors is an old joke. A joke that was never really funny in the first place and a joke that has been repeated and recycled at every possible opportunity. The difference between male and female armour in RPGs is that joke and Bikini Warriors puts it into action by having our four protagonist’s don these supposedly powerful bikinis in battle. By all means, the joke should get old very quickly. But it doesn’t.

Bikini Warriors is eager enough to introduce new jokes, all surrounding the world of RPGs that it manages to keep fresh every episode with something new to explore and a singular punchline at the end of each short story. As a series that is based on a collection of voluptuous figures, it’s quite refreshing to see that instead of going the full-fanservice route, it instead took the highway of moderately overused jokes about RPGs but within a new package. Also, the logo is a reference to Dragon Quest, which is quite cool.

7. Teekyu Season 4 - Season 6

Episodes: 36

Aired: April 2015 - December 2015

Regardless of whether you’re at home, in the office or on the train, I want you to start clapping right now. Clap to your heart’s content. Clap until your arms start a coup and leap off your body as revenge for unreasonable manual labour. Clap because Teekyu has successfully achieved four consecutive seasons! As of Season 7, Teekyu will have been airing for an entire year, something unheard of for many short series. Directed, written, storyboarded and animated by Shin Itagaki, Teekyu is his product through-and-through.

With comedy that runs at a million miles an hour and has a unique form of deafness that blocks out the words “common sense”, Teekyu is a unique combination of being absolutely hilarious and thoroughly mind destroying, leaving you in the same state of mind that watching the latest Die Hard movie might. Also, it’s about tennis. Kind of.

6. Hacka Doll The Animation

Episodes: 13

Aired: October 2015 - December 2015

Anime has arisen from many different forms of media. Manga, light novels, games and even figures have been the target for anime adaptation in the past. But Hacka Doll The Animation is here to break new ground as an adaptation for a news mobile app. As a creative adaptation, the Hacka Dolls appear on Earth to help humanity advance, until it is quickly noted that they’re probably not suitable for the job.

As a collaboration between the renowned Studio Trigger and Creators in Pack, Hacka Doll acts as a parody and satire of anime as a whole, embracing its ability to cover whatever it feels like. Directed by short anime veteran, Ikuo Geso, he also took the positions of animation director, editor, digital painter and storyboard artist as he delivers this brilliant comedy series.

5. My Wife is the Student Council President (Okusama ga Seitokaichou!)

Episodes: 12

Aired: July 2015 - September 2015

The short anime medium is an opportunity for many things and as the staff of My Wife is the Student Council President has realised, it’s the perfect format for an ecchi series. In what has been described as “borderline hentai”, the student council president Ui moves in with Hayato due to a marriage arrangement made by their parents. What follows is a series of uncensored antics that are lewder than even the most prominent of ecchi series.

I’m not sure if it’s even worth saying anything more since you’ve probably already dashed off to Crunchyroll and are marathoning it already. I could talk about its grasp on comedy and how a long series of mishaps end up in hilarious moments. I could even talk about the lovable protagonist Ui and the show’s ability to make you smile. However, I won’t bother with that, since you’re probably more interested in seeing uncensored boobs.

4. Miss Monochrome Season 2 - Season 3

Episodes: 26

Aired: July 2015 - December 2015

Following on from the original series in 2013, Miss Monochrome’s sense of deadpan comedy goes unmatched within the realm of anime as a whole. Miss Monochrome is a robot who has lived through the entirety of human history with the hopes and dreams of becoming a famous idol. With help from her robot vacuum cleaner Ru-chan, her store manager Maneo and her promoter Yayoi, they work together to advance Miss Monochrome’s career… until it all turns to disaster.

Like many of the other short series on this list, Miss Monochrome is silly in so many ways, but it manages to control its silliness to a point where each and every punchline succeeds at hitting its audience. Every time Miss Monochrome hires a gas station attendant to be her DJ or she accidentally stops an alien invasion, the comedic timing and context always ends up playing out exceptionally. It’s a series that is regarded by many to be one of the best and I’m inclined to agree.

Throughout this list, we’ve gone through a whole plethora of comedy centric series that’s main goal is to make us laugh. However, I Can’t Understand My Husband is Saying isn’t just here to make us laugh, but also to just make us smile as it delivers a really warm romantic story. It’s not one that’s full of drama or strained relationships like what we see in so many other romance anime, but rather one about two newlyweds settling down together after marriage.

It’s not a premise that we usually see in anime and it was one that captured a large audience in 2014 within the west. The second season delves even further into this, taking the chance to show how our protagonists met and how this unlikely couple got married in the very first place. It’s a truly lovely story and definitely one worthy of best of the year.

It’s a difficult task to get people to watch Wooser. It’s CG, short and no form of writing can properly describe exactly what it is. However, I’m going to take the opportunity to do what nobody else can and explain what Wooser’s Hand-to-Mouth Life really is: Absolutely Brilliant. Do you really need any more than that? Wooser is everything. Wooser is life. Wooser is the universe. Wooser is the fabric of spacetime that even the greatest metaphysicians have been incapable of unravelling.

Well, maybe that’s going a bit far but Wooser is indeed limitless in terms of its scope. Directed by Seiji Mizushima of Fullmetal Alchemist and Concrete Revolutio fame, the third season of Wooser is definitely the best. With crossover episodes with Arpeggio of Blue Steel and Miss Monochrome, Wooser sets out to do things that no other series really has before. It even has an episode written by Gen Urobuchi that plays out as a Blade Runner reference. It’s seriously brilliant.

1. Wakaba*Girl

Episodes: 13

Aired: July 2015 - September 2015

Reinforcing the Summer season as the best for short shows, Wakaba Girl takes the top spot. Honestly, how couldn’t it? As the product of former-Kyoto Animation staff, Wakaba Girl manages to encapsulate a certain charm and style of comedy that we’ve only ever seen from shows produced within those walls. Wakaba, a sheltered girl from a rich family has one dream: To become a high school girl. But with that dream accomplished fairly quickly, we follow as she tries to become a normal girl with her new friends.

But it’s not all about Wakaba either as she gets encapsulated in an impregnable vault of personality emitted from her newfound friends. It’s slice of life at its very core values and is an absolute blast watching every week as we relive these small teenage wonders such as going out for ice cream with friends for the first time. It’s a story of independence and how valuable that used to be to us all before we realised that it’s the most terrifying thing in the world.

Other Reference: Kagewani

So there we have it. I hope you enjoyed ‘short anime’, because it turns out that there’s actually quite a lot of them. Whilst these are mostly comedy shows, other genres are represented within shows like Kagewani and Kowabon but those were too scary for our scientists. Let us know if you’ve enjoyed your trial period and hopefully you’d like to try out a full prescription of ‘short anime’.

Writer

Author: Callum May

Hi, I'm Callum or 'Canipa' as I'm occasionally referred to online. I enjoy long walks on the beach, reading dramatic poetry and studying philosophy... or I would if watching anime didn't sound way more fun! Usually focused on watching shows seasonally, I'm always keeping up with whatever's new. I'm also always taking the opportunity to promote the greatest anime of all time, Chronicles of the Going Home Club. Watch Chronicles of the Going Home Club. You can also find me on TheCanipaEffect.com